


Drive Your Truck

by LittleSweetCheeks



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, Being There, Car Wreck, Family, Friendship, Gen, Loss, Major character death - Freeform, Mourning, Songfic, remembering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 15:37:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14288061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleSweetCheeks/pseuds/LittleSweetCheeks
Summary: He hated this, this remembering, but he had to do it.





	Drive Your Truck

Pulling up in front of the gray house, Aaron pushed the SUV into park and cut the engine. He hated this, this remembering, but he had to do it. Not because someone else was expecting him to, but because it made him feel, for a little while, closer to the other man.

Climbing out of his vehicle, he shrugged his jacket on. The old truck he was picking up didn’t have the best heat anymore and the inside always felt a bit damp. Aaron made sure he locked up before carefully rounding the front and stepping up onto the curb. The grass and pavement were wet and covered in fallen leaves. He came often to see the kids, but this time of year, with the leaves on the ground, it was when the memories were closest to the surface.

At the end of the front walk, Aaron looked up at the two-story house and tried to remember how his friend used to look, standing in the doorway smiling at him, welcoming him in. For the first couple years after, Aaron didn’t feel welcome here, but he’d come anyway. The third year, they’d all found a way to begin the healing. Aaron had spent months combing every report the team had touched in the past decade and a half, had dug up every article and photo he could find and when he came up empty, he reached out to the others for what they had. He’d then sat in the living room of this home and watched as Savannah had unwrapped the gift. What amounted to a detailed diary of memories from the first day Aaron had met Morgan, to the last.

Savannah had wept, holding Hank and Charlie on her lap as they all looked through it at photos of a man who had been happy with life. A man who had loved his wife and son and would have loved his daughter, if he’d have known.

Finally taking the steps up to the porch, Aaron looked around at the children’s toys. It had been hell, having to walk up to this door and tell a wife, mother, that her husband and the father of her two-year-old son was dead. But it had been worse, days later, when she’d pulled him aside to share news that was somehow ever more heartbreaking.

The kids were a little older now, seven and four or thereabouts. So, when he rang the bell, there were footsteps running to open the door. He smiled when two faces peered up at him through the screen. “Hey, guys.”

“Who is it?” He could hear Savannah call from somewhere in the house.

“It’s Uncle Aaron, Mama.” Hank shouted back before pushing the screen door open. “Come in. Mama is in the kitchen.”

“Thanks.”  Aaron stepped into the house, wiping his feet before searching out the person he was here to see. “Hey.”

Savannah leaned against the sink. “Hey.”

“How are you?”

“Good.” She looked out the window toward the garage. “You headed to see him?”

“Yeah. I haven’t been in a while. We were away over his birthday.”

She nodded. “The kids and I took flowers yesterday.” She met his gaze, brushing hair out of her eyes. “I took a few days off.”

“I only have today. I tried, I just…”

“Yeah.”

Neither of them said more out loud, they never did. Any other time and they managed just fine, but these days… They were both still hurting. The kids seemed to feel it as well because normally Hank would already be begging to throw a football, a skill Aaron had secretly taken lessons to master, and Charlie would be wanting carried. Charlie made his heart break. Aaron had been as present for Savannah as he’d been for Haley, perhaps more, and when the day grew close, he bought tickets for Derek’s mother and sisters to fly out, putting them up in a good hotel so they could be there.

He did his best to be there for every first, every moment for both of the kids just like he knew his friend would have been there for Jack if it would’ve been him.

Letting himself silently out the back, Aaron opened the garage and climbed into Derek’s beat up old truck. Slowly starting the engine, he drew in a deep breath and let the memories wash over him.

He couldn’t believe it had been five years already, on a damp day much like this one, that their lives had changed. The truck still smelled of the same cologne, probably from the spare go-back tucked in the back seat.

_They hadn’t needed them that day, the case had been local and it should have been easy. Safe._

Putting the truck into the correct gear, he mentally patted himself for not grinding it as he shifted. No sense is ruining it because he was used to driving an automatic. Guiding the truck out onto the country roads, Aaron let it fly, aiming toward a few acres in the country that Dave had bought.

_He remembered how the Virginia police had requested their help in apprehending a suspect, it wasn’t an odd request, they helped out the Virginia police often enough. But the suspect took off and led them on a high speed chase down roads just like these._

Aaron turned hard right and ground his teeth and the truck lurched and bumped over untamed fields.

_He and Morgan had been in SUVs, him behind the younger man. Dusk was setting in, distorting the shapes of trees and things. Aaron turned, watching in his rear view as dirt flew into the air. They had thought the unsub had taken an unmarked dirt road when he’d jerked to the left with Morgan just a second behind._

What Aaron watched happen next had left him with nightmares for years.

_Their suspect hadn’t found a road, but had skidded to a stop just short of a dangerous drop off. The moment the first SUV followed him, he gassed the vehicle forward, causing Morgan to pull back hard right before slamming on the brakes to avoid where the suspect had stopped again in their original lane. Aaron was sure Morgan had been wondering what the hell was going on. Before anyone could react, a semi had appeared as if out of thin air around the corner, smashing into the driver’s door. The semi driver had attempted to not make the wreck worse and had pulled hard to his right, shoving the SUV back the way it’d come. And over the drop._

_Aaron had been screaming into his comms, abandoning vehicle and suspect as he slid down the drop, cutting and bruising himself as he fell. There was silence over the line for a moment before the rest of the team started asking what had happened in a mass of confused and worried voices._

_By the time he reached the place where the vehicle had landed, his earpiece had gone silent. He was bruised and battered himself from the fall but he carefully edged forward. The SUV was on it’s side, precarious, the driver’s side entirely gone. Quietly, Aaron had worked his way closer until he could see through the remains of the windshield. What he could see wasn’t good._

Blinking, Aaron refocused on the field and the line of trees he’d just barely missed. Doing another turn, he savored the destruction of the grass. It felt good in a way, destroying the ground that played a part in destroying his friend.

_Emergency rescue had taken almost an hour to find them and then get help down to them. In that time, Aaron had watched the blood gathering in the leaves below the vehicle. He watched the way Morgan’s crumpled body hung, he remembered the feel of nothing as he tried to find a pulse._

_The SUV had to be cut in half to drag his body out, exposing to him for the first time the open wound on his head, the way Morgan’s body had hung limp as they’d pulled him free. The way the sheet had laid over the stretched as it had been lifted up._

Shoving the truck into park, Aaron climbed out and just stared up at the sky. It was beginning to drizzle, the rain tearing at something inside him. His ankle and arm ached anew like they always did when it rained now, a physiological reaction to a memory. He stayed there until he was soaked through and shivering.

_Hotch had demanded radio silence until he reached the hospital. No calls, no talking. Grimacing, he’d found her working and just waited until she saw him. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen one of them badly banged up so he hadn’t bothered to clean up but when she’d turned. When she saw the blood on him and the look in his eyes._

Climbing back into the idling truck, Aaron headed back to Savannah’s house. It would be a quiet evening, the kids would want to snuggle up beside him on the couch, they always did. Savannah would offer to feed him and he would refuse a few times before accepting. He would eventually remind her to move on and she would say she wasn’t ready and shouldn’t he understand that. He would nod silently, he did understand. He’d tried dating a few times, but he always found himself comparing the women to Haley and she was a lot longer gone than Derek.

Savannah had once suggested that perhaps he shouldn’t be looking for a woman then, he’d shot back that maybe she shouldn’t look for a man. They’d been silent for an hour before Charlie had crawled in his lap and said she’d marry him, breaking the tension.

A smile twitched at his lips and he hoped Derek looked down often and smiled at them all.


End file.
